Our Inspiration

Dr. Arthur M. Squires (1916-2012) was a renowned chemical engineer, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a University Distinguished Professor Emeritus, who envisioned the selective air capture concepts that are being commercialized by MOVA Technologies today. As an engineer, he specialized in fluidized beds, petroleum refining, hydro-carbon synthesis, coal conversions, dust filtration, and air pollution control.

Dr. Squires earned his chemical engineering degree from the University of Missouri and continued on to Cornell University where he earned his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering. Before he finished his Ph.D., the government recruited him to work on the Manhattan Project at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. When World War II ended, he returned to Cornell to finish his degree in 1947. After college, Dr. Squires entered the workforce as a chemical engineer in New York. He was also a consultant to the U.S. Bureau of Mines, the British Government, the United Nations, and Union Carbide.

In 1976, he became a chemical engineering professor where he continued working on an application for an inexpensive method of separating carbon dioxide from combustion gases and delivering the carbon dioxide in a pure stream for permanent storage. Dr. Squires believed carbon-based fuels would continue to be an important part of the world’s infrastructure and had been working to invent new innovations to more efficiently filter and clean carbon-based emissions up until his death in 2012; these innovations became the inspiration for MOVA’s patented selective air capture technology.